Engaged yet excluded: The processual, dispersed, and political dynamics of boundary work

What happens when people try to ‘transcend’ organizational boundaries and engage with so-called outsiders? Current boundary-work literature does not fully account for the processual, dispersed, and political dynamics triggered by such efforts. To address this shortcoming, this article builds on an ethnographic study of a professional care provider’s attempts to engage local citizens within one of its care homes. We analyze how actors negotiate the parameters of outsider engagement – that is, how they interactively (re-)erect and (re-)efface boundaries between actors (Who is engaged?), issues (What is their engagement about?), and positions of authority (Does local engagement affect central decision-making?). We contribute to extant theorizing by, first, explicitly scrutinizing boundary work’s temporal and spatial dynamics. Testifying to the importance of analyzing temporal sequences, we show how attempts at transcending boundaries intensified boundary work on multiple organizational platforms. Paradoxically, inclusionary efforts evoked exclusionary effects (and vice versa) as actors came to contest and, eventually, redefine ‘appropriate’ insider–outsider relations. Second, our analysis highlights how the political effectiveness of an inclusive and non-hierarchical approach still, ironically, depends on ongoing hierarchical support and managerial enforcement. Third, our article makes a case for the adoption of long-term, multi-sited methodologies when studying the everyday dynamics of boundary-work processes

Age-related differences in brain electrical activity during extended continuous face recognition in younger children, older children and adults

To examine the development of recognition memory in primary-school children, 36 healthy younger children (8-9years old) and 36 healthy older children (11-12years old) participated in an ERP study with an extended continuous face recognition task (Study 1). Each face of a series of 30 faces was shown randomly six times interspersed with distracter faces. The children were required to make old vs. new decisions. Older children responded faster than younger children, but younger children exhibited a steeper decrease in latencies across the five repetitions. Older children exhibited better accuracy for new faces, but there were no age differences in recognition accuracy for repeated faces. For the N2, N400 and late positive complex (LPC), we analyzed the old/new effects (repetition 1 vs. new presentation) and the extended repetition effects (repetitions 1 through 5). Compared to older children, younger children exhibited larger frontocentral N2 and N400 old/new effects. For extended face repetitions, negativity of the N2 and N400 decreased in a linear fashion in both age groups. For the LPC, an ERP component thought to reflect recollection, no significant old/new or extended repetition effects were found. Employing the same face recognition paradigm in 20 adults (Study 2), we found a significant N400 old/new effect at lateral frontal sites and a significant LPC repetition effect at parietal sites, with LPC amplitudes increasing linearly with the number of repetitions. This study clearly demonstrates differential developmental courses for the N400 and LPC pertaining to recognition memory for faces. It is concluded that face recognition in children is mediated by early and probably more automatic than conscious recognition processes. In adults, the LPC extended repetition effect indicates that adult face recognition memory is related to a conscious and graded recollection process rather than to an automatic recognition process

Right-Wing Extremism in the Netherlands:why it is still a marginal phenomenon

Paper presented at the Symposium Right-Wing Extremism in Europe Organized by the Academy for Politics and Current Affairs of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, Munich in cooperation with the European Centre for Research and Action on Racism and Antisemitism (C.E.R.A.), Paris at Berlin, 3 – 5 November 200

Terrestrial implications for the maritime geoarchaeological resource: A view from the Lower Palaeolithic

Stone tools and faunal remains have been recovered from the English Channel and the North Sea through trawling, dredging for aggregates, channel clearance, and coring. These finds highlight the potential for a maritime Lower Palaeolithic archaeological resource. It is proposed here that any Lower Palaeolithic artefacts, faunal remains, and sediments deposited in the maritime zone during dry, low-stand phases were once (and may still be) contextually similar to their counterparts in the terrestrial Lower Palaeolithic records of north-western Europe. Given these similarities, can interpretive models and analytical frameworks developed for terrestrial archaeology be profitably applied to an assessment of the potential value of any maritime resource? The terrestrial geoarchaeological resource for the Lower Palaeolithic is dominated by artefacts and ecofacts that have been fluvially reworked. The spatio-temporal resolution of these data varies from entire river valleys and marine isotope stages to river channel gravel bar surfaces and decadal timescales, thus supporting a variety of questions and approaches. However, the structure of the terrestrial resource also highlights two fundamental limitations in current maritime knowledge that can restrict the application of terrestrial approaches to any potential maritime resource: (i) how have the repetitive transgressions and regressions of the Middle and Late Pleistocene modified the terrace landforms and sediments associated with the river systems of the English Channel and southern North Sea basins?; and (ii) do the surviving submerged terrace landforms and fluvial sedimentary deposits support robust geochronological models, as is the case with the classical terrestrial terrace sequences? This paper highlights potential approaches to these questions, and concludes that the fluvial palaeogeography, Pleistocene fossils, and potential Lower Palaeolithic artefacts of the maritime geoarchaeological resource can be profitably investigated in future as derived, low-resolution data sets, facilitating questions of colonisation, occupation, demography, and material culture